G'day. Hope everyone's well. Sorry this first post has taken a while. I had some technical difficulties (shocker!) We've now ditched Off Exploring as it was being a pain & opted for this site instead so hopefully everything will work.
We had a great time in West Australia. We only had a week there but we managed to pack a lot in, which is probably why it felt like so much longer since we left the UK.
The flights over were really good, even Gary said he found them ok. I was kept entertained by Broadchurch, which I never got to watch on TV - so good. Gary recommends World War Z.
On arrival I whizzed straight through the electronic passport but Gary's wouldn't work so he had to queue & then be asked loads of questions about his visit. Not the best start for him!
Our hotel in Perth was really nice & in a good location, although they have free buses to get around the City, which is super handy - watch & learn UK! We'd paid for a nice place for the first couple of nights in case we had jet lag but luckily we were fine. The weather was great so we checked out Kings Park & Botanical Gardens, which were really nice with good views of the city. Northbridge is their main area for the evenings with bars & restaurants but the Sun & Mon nights we were there were pretty quiet. We also had no idea how early they stopped serving food (everyone seems to get up early but go to bed about 9pm) so the first night we ended up with a kebab! Gary was more than happy but there's a reason why you generally only eat kebabs when you're drunk! Not much chance of us getting drunk out here though, unless we buy booze in from a bottle shop as it's so expensive. Like £10 for a G&T & £8 a beer. A lot of places in Northbridge do special offers on food so we started hunting those out but they tend to be burgers & chips, which again Gary is thrilled about but I'm panicking about what 3 months of that will do - better book me in for 5 hour sessions now Lara G!
From Perth we moved on to Fremantle, where we stayed with a lady called Simmi that we found through airbnb (great recommendation Lara C). We stopped at Cottesloe Beach on the way, which was gorgeous. We did have to lug our backpacks with us, which I moaned about a bit (another shocker!) We also paid £10 each for fish & chips, I'm assuming the fish was famous like Nemo or something for that price!
I really liked Fremantle, very chilled. Gary was also a fan of the town but the place we were staying was about a 10 min bus ride away & he wishes we'd been closer. On Weds (27th Nov) we did a trip to Rottnest Island (or Rotto if you're a local - it really is true that Aussie's just add an 'o' to the end of every word!), which was amazing. Beaches easily rivalled the Carribean. It's car free so you hire bikes to get around. We cycled a lot of the island but probably not enough to burn off the limited edition white chocolate & strawberry Magnums that I found in the shop, happy days - there will always be room in the daily budget for them!!
From there we headed on to Margaret River, via a town called Bunbury. Stayed the first night with a lady called Ruth, another airbnb booking. Nice place but she had 2 cats who had collars with bells on & it was like a rendition of jingle bells as they ran around during the night! It did nothing to change our view on cats! She was also a total hippy having lived on a community for a while, so there was lots of tie dye, jossticks and buddha paintings. The josssticks didn't totally eliminate the smell of cats though!
They had a great pub there called the Settlers Tavern, which was very British & did the best bangers & mash (easily pleased!) although they call sausages snags. Gary, unsurprisingly, had a burger! It was open mic night but luckily the cost of alcohol meant that neither of us got drunk enough to give it a whirl!
The next day was officially my best day ever & even if I get married & have kids I think this will still surpass it! We did a wine tasting tour, which also included a visit to a chocolate factory with free chocolate. I reckon it must be what heaven's like! Margaret River is the main wine region on the west coast & we visited 5 wineries & did about 5-6 tastings in each. We also went to a venison farm (Kerry - I thought of you & Rich!) & a cheese factory, which was so yummy. Lester - we talked about you a lot as I think it would have been your dream day too, one shop even had homemade honey! Kirst - there was also a winery called Edwards so maybe check out if James has any family over here, would be a pretty cool thing to inherit!! There were 13 people on the tour, who were all really nice. One couple invited us to stay with them if we're ever in Atlanta so that's the next trip sorted!
Ruth couldn't accomodate us for our final night in Margaret River so she put us in touch with her friends Amanda & James (canadian and NZ) who are officially the nicest people ever. They have a great house on stilts in the forest (although a bit of a mission to find at night, thank god we bought a torch). We went out for a drink with them in town & the next morning Mandy cooked breakfast for us then took us on a roadtrip to find kangaroos (which we did, woohoo) & then on to this cute coffee shop overlooking the beach. Not sure Starbucks is going to cut it when we get back! The wine tour & staying with these guys made for a great Margaret River experience.
It was then on a bus back to Perth to fly to Darwin. The bus took about 4.5 hours but we slept for a lot of it, which was handy as that night we decided to sleep at Perth airport to save money as we were flying at 8.30 the next morning. Not an experience I'm in a hurry to repeat! I thought we'd be able to lie across a few chairs but they have individual metal arms (stupid idea) so that put paid to that plan. So we laid on the floor, which was pretty much bare concrete & so painful (it actually bruised me, which I know is easily done but still!). It was also freezing so we used Gary's 0.001mm thick microfibre towel to keep warm, how handy that was! At 1 point we woke to find the cleaner hoovering about an inch from our heads! Gary also got woken up by 2 people talking really loudly while everyone was asleep and that put him in a bad mood! Fun times but we did save $70, which is going straight in the G&T fund! Unsurprisingly we slept most of the flight to Darwin (only about 3 hours) but I made sure I was awake for breakfast, given the cost of food over here you don't want to miss a free meal.
Bit of an epic first post but that summarises our whole time in WA. Don't worry, they should be shorter from now on (no promises though).
Speak soon. Please keep in touch & tell us what you're up to back home.
C & G x
